Useful Pages

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew Itby John W. DeanBased on Nixon's overlooked recordings, New York Times bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we've come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened. Watergate forever changed American politics, and in light of the revelations about the NSA's widespread surveillance program, the scandal has taken on new significance.

Yet remarkably, four decades after Nixon was forced to resign, no one has told the full story of his involvement in Watergate. In The Nixon Defense , former White House Counsel John W. Dean, one of the last major surviving figures of Watergate, draws on his own transcripts of almost a thousand conversations, a wealth of Nixon's secretly recorded information, and more than 150,000 pages of documents in the National Archives and the Nixon Library to provide the definitive answer to the question: What did President Nixon know and when did he know it?

Through narrative and contemporaneous dialogue, Dean connects dots that have never been connected, including revealing how and why the Watergate break-in occurred, what was on the mysterious 18 1/2 minute gap in Nixon's recorded conversations, and more. In what will stand as the most authoritative account of one of America's worst political scandals, The Nixon Defense shows how the disastrous mistakes of Watergate could have been avoided and offers a cautionary tale for our own time.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Dodging Extinction: Power, Food, Money and the Future of Life on Earthby Anthony D. Barnosky.Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be the sixth great extinction on Earth, with dire consequences.

Optimistic that we can change this ominous forecast if we act now, Barnosky provides clear-cut strategies to guide the planet away from global catastrophe.

In many instances the necessary technology and know-how already exist and are being applied to crucial issues; human-caused climate change, feeding the world's growing population, and exploiting natural resources.

Barnosky
tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how
it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today.

We meet Catherine the Great, with her endless parade of virile young lovers; her unhinged son, Paul I, who ordered the bones of one of his mother's paramours dug out of its grave and tossed into a gorge; and Grigori Rasputin, the "Mad Monk," whose mesmeric domination of the last of the Romanov tsars helped lead to the monarchy's undoing.

From Peter the Great's penchant for personally beheading his recalcitrant subjects (he kept the severed head of one of his mistresses pickled in alcohol) to Nicholas and Alexandra's brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Secret Lives of the Tsars captures all the splendor and infamy that was Imperial Russia.